Published 10:44 am, Friday, January 17, 2014

Before Robert Redford kicked off the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday — the Utah movie festival he founded in 1978 — the 77-year-old actor wanted to clear a few things up about his apparent Oscar snub earlier that day.

Redford starred in November's critically acclaimed "All Is Lost," which earned a single Oscar nod for Achievement in Sound Editing but the Academy failed to recognize Redford's demanding performance as a resourceful sailor lost at sea.

“Let me speak frankly about how I feel about it,” Redford told reporters at a Sundance press conference, according to Variety. “I don’t want that to get in the way of why we’re here."

“There’s a lot of campaigning going on and it can be very political,” he added about the Oscars race. “In our case, we suffered from little to no distribution. I don’t know what they were afraid of. They didn’t want to spend money or they were incapable.”

Redford is referring to the film's distributor Roadside Attractions, which is partially owned by Lionsgate.

"We had no campaign to cross over into the mainstream," Redford said of the film's failed distribution.